97 comments:

I honestly think that if past administrations had the same attitude towards the remaining 99% of the press, then places like CBS wouldn't be fabricating so much garbage. The press should earn a spot at the press conferences by at least not lying.

I followed a link through (from Instapundit?) to ThinkProgress (I think) and the comments were predictable... whoo whoo cheerleading about brilliant Obama and stupid Faux News...

And I thought...

Fox News has the largest audience. By association that means that a significant portion of the electorate have just been called too dumb to know the difference.

This isn't *politically* smart.

A friend of mine said to me... don't listen to those guys... don't listen to Hannity, don't listen to Beck, don't listen to Limbaugh. And, since he's my friend I didn't kick him in the keester, but didn't he realize what he was saying to me when he said don't *listen?*

He was making an overt comment on my judgment. Essentially, don't *listen* because *you* don't have the mental capability to judge what is said.

Thank god we voted for the Senator who had demonstrated a record of true bi-partisanship. You know, the kind of guy who is comfortable sitting down with the opposing side and finding compromise. Unity!

The Obama administration has all the incidents, rituals and defenses of a cult religion. Obama is always right, by definition. He is above any humor directed at him, because he is a serious and effective man. There is nothing funny about the leaders of cults. Remember, God and cult leaders will not be mocked.

The members of the cult do not need to read anything but the authorized doctrines and should not expose themselves to the heresy and lies the opposition spews. The cult, itself, will fight against the evil that is the opposition.

Can't help but believe this emanates from the very top because, thin-skinned as he is, Obama has never shown much capacity to tolerate even slight disagreement let alone criticism and outright opposition without resorting to name-calling and strong-arm tactics.

The mask is coming off. The tactic of creating a fight against counter revolutionary activity to rally the troops is old Marxist-Leninist MO that Castro and Chavez now practice. So Obama starting that up is no surprise. From the Joe the Plumber slip up remark to the covered up Honduran attacks on Non-Marxist forces, the day was coming when the Opposition News services would be attacked. The traditions of an American President elected by 51% and loyal to all 100% of the electorate has been thrown out by Obama. Will that get him another Prize awarded to him by American haters soon?

Fox News is an opponent. During the Bush administration, CNN, NBC, et al were also opponents. The White House then didn't treat them very well, either.

I think it's counterproductive to restrict press access to adversarial reporters, because they have to fill their time somehow. If they aren't filling copy with information the White House gives them, they'll fill it with anonymous sources or thinly veiled opinion.

I didn't get it a few weeks ago when Obama refused to appear on FOX to push his healthcare agenda.

Instead of appearing on a network that dominates the ratings, a place where he KNOWS his message needs to be heard, to gain support--he chose to appear where nobody would see it, or where they already agreed.

He does not want to appeal to Fox viewers. He and people of his political ilk believe that they can marginalize Fox by treating it as a pariah. If enough people begin thinking it's a pariah, they'll stop watching it. The Left only has to peel away 10-20% of Fox's audience to accomplish their goal.

I'm all for President God Damn America making as much of the electorate his enemy as possible.

After all, for him and his ilk America and it's foundational values, individual liberty and personal responsibility, free markets, limited government power, etc., are obstacles to the implementation of their ultimate goal of a centrally planned government with unchecked power over the lives of the population.

The more they expose themselves as the power hungry evil tyrants they are, the better the chance that the freedom loving people in this country will rise to defeat them.

"[T]he man needs to step past his candidate mode and recognize that he is the President."

There's a connect-the-dots puzzle here hiding in plain sight.

Obama shrinks from real leadership -- Pelosi/Reid have assumed that role on the domestic front, and no one's doing it on the foreign affairs front. On the international stage especially, he disavows the leading role formerly played by the US and instead sees himself as the community organizer-in-chief, trying to lead the denizens of the UN in a rousing chorus of "we are the world." While he does so the dollar sinks, the 'necessary war' in Afganistan flounders and enemies gather, attracted by a display of fecklessness and weakness so astonishing that even the French can't stand it.

Enemies are bound to notice that the way to get Obama's America to run home and abandon commitments is to inflict pain. We're back in 2006, pre-surge, with all the DC worthies urging a pull-out (phrasing it differently, of course), ready if necessary to reenact the humiliating scene of Americans boarding the last helicopter from the roof of the embassy. With one difference: in 2006, the president said no to all that, and we had the surge. As the Norwegians noticed, Obama is not Bush, and it's unlikely we'll see anything like that on this go-around.

He's sticking with what got him this far, seemingly incapable of adjusting to having won the presidency -- he's still a one-note act of fancy-sounding speechifying about platitudes, with lots of "me, me, me but it's not really about me" blather thrown in. The Oslo crowd noticed that, too, and they're playing to his vanity as the surest way to keep him on the path to Utopia.

Weak, platitudinous, self-righteous, incapable of leadership. It's a combination that will encourage others to take advantage. If you build that sort of thing, they will come. He's asking for it, and quite likely to get it. God help the United States of America.

"Obama the Candidate" isn't quite the right tag. More like Obama the Anti-President.

Fox News has an established audience, is in good shape, and can weather this probably without losing anything.

Boycotting Fox News was a symbolic gesture, a shot across the bow, warning the other networks, who do not have a steady audience. They are being warned that this Administration will not respond lightly to bad coverage. And this is happening just as the msm are beginning to thaw in their coverage and question the administration in stronger ways.

A message is being sent to the newspapers and television networks that they better stay in tune with the Message, or they are going to be lumped in with Fox News on this now official blacklist.

Watch out for network employees to start naming names to the administration, saying who is encouraging dissension and unAmerican press coverage of the sovereign.

All that will do is increase the number of viewers who watch Fox and listen to Rush. People don't like to be told what to so (except lefty sheeple) and this will only accelerate the migration of viewers from the MSM to free media sources.

All free press should be in opposition to power, whatever side of political spectrum that power be. This is what free press is by definition, because it can be free to be rulling administration's lap dog even in the worst dictatorships.

So by defining FOX as the only "opponent" Obama Administration basically declares that the only free press in the US is FOX. Nice.

"A message is being sent to the newspapers and television networks that they better stay in tune with the Message, or they are going to be lumped in with Fox News on this now official blacklist."

Will that work or will it backfire?

Because no matter how willingly the non-faux news and newspapers have been to prop up Obama, it requires a certain semblance of objectivity as a sop to the pride of people who believe they really *are* objective. Take that veil away and how many journalists will continue to go quietly? It won't matter what their politics are.

A message is being sent to the newspapers and television networks that they better stay in tune with the Message, or they are going to be lumped in with Fox News on this now official blacklist.

That would be the media analog to previous groundwork laid by the "teabaggers are racist" White Scare, which I thought was truly aimed at the centrist Democrats, not Republicans, who might eventually abandon Obama.

What next- state run media. Agree or be put out of business? Opponent? What about the MSNBC entertainment channel, the comedian Larry King, or that great entertainer Rachel Maddow. These people are the only ones who will be allowed access- as long as they agree with the Administration.

These people smoked too much dope and crack when they were younger. Their brain cells are fried.

The New America- all criticism must be stopped. You must agree or be shunned. The White House says so!

I remember people like this from history. Their names were Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao.

And you people castigated Karl Rove? These people make Rove look like a saint.

I had a epiphany a little while ago. I realized that Obama reminded me of another famous Chicagoan: Ferris Bueller. All the way down to people saying, "Barack Obama, you're my hero!" Being more clever than anyone else in the room and being able to pull the wool over their eyes. Going out and having a good time without actually accomplishing anything of substance. What have we been living for the past nine months but Barack Obama's Day Off? Next he'll be in a parade singing "Danke Schoen."

Dunn's political career has been primarily on the campaign consultant side. Thus, her POV is naturally more from the PR/marketing/promotion/fundraising side. It's fundamentally at odds with the journalistic ideal (whatever one might think of that ideal, in theory or practice).

He can't be anything but the candidate because he has clearly demonstrated that he doesn't have what it takes to be a president. Surely, the fact that he spent a year and a half as a sitting senator should have been one of the red flags that said that he wasn't good at that job either. He is an incompetent fraud and his entire organization is as much.

So now a news organization like Fox News is considered the opposition by the administration? The President Barely administration is a joke. It's already on a track to be worse than the Carter Administration.

Obama's news Director confirms a major news media conglomerate is now on a new Enemies List.

Rupert Murdoch is likely jumping for joy...hearing that dumb Obama minions have announced Fox stands for 45% of the country....and anyone that has problems with Obama knows where to tune the TV to...Ca Ching!!

(For historical illumination, it is worth noting Nixon never personally had any involvement in creating the Enemies List. It was dumb minions like Chuck Colson and Ron Ziegler (Anita Dunn's counterpart 40 years ago) that hatched that Brilliant brainstorm...)

I still don't get it. Fox News is an opponent. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with calling them what they are?

You forget that for their own self image, the Right has to pretend that Fox News is "fair and balanced". So Ann and others decide to cry and whine while accussing others of crying and whining. How meta.

Of course, back in Nixon's day, the progressive Jews controlled newspapers and TV in a way they never could when cable and the Internet came along.And Nixon was the living embodiment of what they thought were the political persecution of "innocent Jews accused of being communists, the wrongful conviction of Alger Hiss and his Jewish associates, and the abominable anti-Semetic execution of the Rosenbergs as part of the witch hunt."

McCarthy was dead, they decided to give Bobby Kennedy a pass, and never went after Roy Cohn because he was one of their own and "connected" to the Jewish Elites in matters outside "McCarthyism".

That left Nixon as a target. A big one, that they worked 20 years to bring down.

Nixon did have enemies.So does Obama.

Later, we found out that everyone Nixon went after were in fact, guilty as Nixon claimed and made a case in prosecution for...as communists and Soviet agents...or strongly sympathetic to Stalin's agenda (Helen Gahagan Douglas).

Maybe Obama will come through this successful and infuriate his critics much as Nixon infuriated the "red & pink" East Coast Jews and Manhattanite media moguls.

But he should take a lesson from Don Corleone and not Nixon. "Friends close, but keep your enemies closer". "And never say you are at war until the last of them sleeps with the fishes."

By having minions that publicly said the NIxon Admin was at war with certain critics, they formalized the conflict with the Sulzbergers, the Meyers of the WP, the Paleys and Sarnoffs of TV boardrooms. Lines were drawn, the war was on. Scandal and legal pretext and drumming propaganda barrage brought the hapless Nixon Down for doing things that FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ did far worse and far more often - law breaking and illegal coverups that a media at war with Nixon swept under the rug for other Leaders.

And a war started because two decades earlier they though Nixon was going after innocent people and with Mccarthy dead, Bobby being first an Obamalike rock star then a noble martyr, and Roy Cohn hosting parties for Manhattan's power elites - Nixon was their only valid target.It was never about Watergate, it was about payback for the 1950s and Nixon blocking progressive agenda to enact his culturally conservative but socially progressive agenda. Watergate was just a tool, a weapon to be used in the war.Pity.They were wrong. The people they thought were Nixon's persecuted victims were actually Soviet sympathizers. And had Nixon lasted, we would have had universal health care and a national energy plan. Those were Nixon's "last great" domestic plans he had for 1972-1976.

That was lost.First by two weak Presidents, then a belief that "the best in the world!! healthcare and energy systems of America" needed no stinking plan...just the invisible free hand of markets and wisdom of Wall Street leaders and the "educated free choice of consumers" creating even better energy independence, further energy conserving consumer choices, and ever cheaper healthcare through wise consumers with Freedom!! to choose and ever cheaper drugs and care thanks to "Miracle High Technology!!".

Boy, to be able to go back 30 years with todays healthcare 37 trilion deficit, us 70% dependent on foreign oil, our industries gutted by China.....and make a case to the American people to blow off Nixon doing what FDR, TRuman, JFK, and LBJ did and just keep him in office!!

Fox News Channel is without a shadow of a doubt much closer to "fair and balanced" than any of their competition. Liberals/Democrats are constantly on the channel, offering their perspective to balance out the Conservatives/Republicans. It's pretty close to equal time, outside of the Beck and Hannity shows.

Comapare that to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, where "fair and balanced" usually is three or four liberals and a moderate masquerading as a conservative. All five of those channels were to one degree or another in the tank for Obama from the get-go, because he fits with the politics of 95% of the people who work there. Indeed, the only group that Obama might have gotten higher support from than African-Americans was the MSM.

Boy, to be able to go back 30 years with todays healthcare 37 trilion deficit, us 70% dependent on foreign oil, our industries gutted by China.....and make a case to the American people to blow off Nixon doing what FDR, TRuman, JFK, and LBJ did and just keep him in office!!

I watched the interview (on Howard Kurtz's Reliable sources on CNN). A couple comments:1) Kurtz essentially defended Fox against the Dunn position by pointing out that the news part of the operation was fairly straightforward. The "opinion" part (i.e. in the evening) wasn't. Dunn disagreed and used the Fox non-coverage of Sen. Ensign's troubles as an example. So CNN (via Kurtz) did defend a fellow network.2) Dunn sounded exceedingly whining in the interview. Kept thinking "Is this what you want in a WH Communications director?"3) A telling silence (but brought up in the after-piece discussion) about the WH being ok with the obvious, similar slant of MSNBC, but in the WH's favor.

Personally, I don't have much of a problem with taking a political stance about who's "for us" and "who's agin' " us. But as mentioned above, this works better on the campaign than in office.

I think that's debatable, fls. FOX certainly reported the earliest Tea Parties and the commentary shows (which are different than the news, would you agree?) promoted them. Most of the hoopla about how the Tea Parties weren't legitimate and were somehow being put on by FOX or whoever else, and were astroturf was pretty poorly disguised and desperate spin to justify other people, news networks or politicians, ignoring them.

And while the anti-war rallies and anti-Bush stuff *might* not have been promoted by the other networks it was reported in a pretty darn favorable manner, don't you think? And of course there were those fabulous examples of war reporting that seemed to be willing propaganda for Al Qaida.

The Nobel emphasized how little Obama has accomplished for good or ill.

Now this shitstorm against Fox emphasizes the lockstep sycophancy of all other media, the childish peevishness of an inexperienced administration, and that, if they had good ideas, they would welcome any stump from which to broadcast them, but they don't.

Every week that goes by rewards us with at least one such epic fail by The One.

Goerbles tried to do this back 70 years ago and they all wound up in the bunker together . We are entering a soft tyrrany or maybe worse and Fox is getting to the facts of this criminal heirarchy. Damn this administration and anyone who would defile our liberty . Too many people have shed blood for Fox`s right to tell the truth and it may take more to keep that right . Goerbles will not be resurrected at any costs.